Moral guidance

Sandy Brindley of Rape Crisis Scotland rightly wants to ensure that everyone realises that “having sex with someone who is too drunk to consent is rape”, and wants young people to have “spaces” to “explore” their “values in relation to sex” (your report, 11 May).

This is all very well as far as it goes, but rape, accusations of rape, regretted sexual encounters and unsafe sex will only be curbed by strong moral values relating to drunkenness and sex.

So long as girls lacking an appreciation of the virtue of modesty, and devoid of any sexual ethic beyond what they are taught at school (don’t have sex unless you really feel like it) join with similarly amoral porn-consuming boys in drunken socialising, serious problems will ensue.

Of course, adult society in general cannot pass adequate values on to the next generation, because it lacks them itself.

Rape is such a terrible crime that it needs a framework of moral protection around it; mere prohibition of the crime itself is akin to allowing children to wrestle on a sheer cliff edge with an instruction not to fall off.

If past experience is anything to go by, I will now be accused of in some way condoning rape or excusing rapists, but nothing could be further than the truth.

Richard Lucas

Broomyknowe

Edinburgh